Sunday, 27th October 2019 – Delhi to Jaipur

We’d arranged for a driver and car to take us around for our trip, which sounds grand but is incredibly cost effective. He picked us up on time, drove us the 260km from Delhi to Jaipur and dropped us off at our hotel. So not the most thrilling way to spend the day.

Except that there is always something to learn from looking out of the window.

It’s basically two roads from Delhi to Jaipur, all toll motorway and all a microcosm of the preconceptions I’ve brought with me about the country.  Most of the first 100km or so is completely built up along the side of the road with a combination of shanty shops in what appear to be half length garages, accommodation and rubbish heaps. But interspersed with those at frequent intervals are medium rise apartment blocks, one-off modern hotels, entrances to industrial parks and upmarket shops such as a Jaguar car show room.

There are also huge numbers of petrol stations and truck depots. I tried counting the trucks for a while but had to give up. There were never fewer than fifteen or twenty vehicles at a time, sometimes three of four times that number with depots no more than ten minutes apart and often much more frequently than that. There were some trucks on the road but most were laid up because of the Diwalhi holiday. They will all be back out there on Tuesday and that has to add up to thousands of trucks normally on this one road every day.

It makes you think. We might be trying to save the planet one lightbulb at a time in the UK but we’ve not got a chance of tackling global change until we can bring the big players into the game. Delhi has a population of 20m, Jaipur has 5m and that’s more than a third of the UK population right there. India as a whole has some 20 billion

The scale of global change needed was not a perspective I was expecting this early in the trip.

Once we’d got over the half way mark, things became more rural. There was one area in particular that felt very calm and special for no obvious reason and then the feeling disappeared. Shortly afterwards our driver, Santos pulled over to feed the local monkeys and also shared some bottles of water with kids who came up to the car. When we were talking about this afterwards he explained he often did it ‘because it made his heart feel good’.

Jaipur itself dates back to the 12^th century and was the first planned city in Northern India. The guide book says it was planned in a grid system of seven blocks of buildings with straight avenues lined with trees with the whole area surrounded by high walls pierced with ten gates. That’s true and the area has a lot of chaotic charm but it does belie the growth that’s taken place beyond the walls which has led to daily jousts as scooters, cars, and tuk-tuks battle to get in through the gates.

The guide book also says that the buildings are uniformally rose pink and that the colour was chosen after several experiments to cut down the intense glare from the reflection of the blazing rays of the sun. Terracotta orange would be closer to the mark but pink apparently symbolises welcome, so pink it is.

Today was the actual celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, symbolising the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance and fireworks over sleep. We had dinner in the hotel’s open air roof top restaurant and seemed to be at the centre of firework displays all around the city which lasted from around 7.30pm until well after one in the morning. It’s all supposed to be about worship to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and wealth. We just thought it was good of them to lay it on for us.